A Cub Called Crash, Book One of the Crash the Cub series, is available for pre-order.
I have deep appreciation for my mother, a writer, saddled as she was, with children. Both monikers—mother/writer—come, at face value, with reasonably streamlined job descriptions. Yet their definitions are as varied as the theories purportedly written to explain them.
Therefore, I have questions.
In the shifting sands of motherhood, how on earth did you find time to write?
Is editing the real reason you were so diligent about nap-time?
Did you, in conversation with strangers, switch the order of the job title: mother/writer, writer/mother? And then did you feel guilty and then defiant and then guilty again?
Did you worry that motherhood would make you a terrible writer and that you’d have to resist the urge towards both the grandiose and the banal?
Did you ever write a scene where the character made a grocery list because you needed to make a grocery list? And did that list change seasonally?
In similar vein, did you ever speak out loud the words you were writing, and then not remember who the intended recipient was? As in: “It was a bright cold day in April, and you needed to wear a coat…” (that first bit was Orwell’s, but then you knew that...)
Did you resort to asking your four-year-old what happens after the alien gets back on his spaceship, without hiding the desperation in your voice even while pretending it was just a fun game?
Did pregnancy food aversions take on a more literary form, as in the complete inability to stomach horror, erotica or fan fiction?
Did you worry your child wouldn’t like your writing?
Did you worry that your child would in fact die, as they claimed, of starvation if you were fifteen minutes late in preparing dinner because you had to finish a paragraph?
Did you worry that your child would not understand, on a visceral level, that your identity was tied to being a writer, and that they would just resent you for it?
Did you take your child’s notes when they told you that the story was okay but that it would have been better if it was eaten by a dinosaur?
Did you know the duality of trying to give everything to your work and everything to your child and feeling like there was no balance, no disentangling, and that it was always snack time?
I believe you did.
On the eve of the book releases I’ve been thinking about the less satirical versions of this and more. I can still hear my mother’s voice reading out loud to me as a child, a voice that my own child will never know, and then the below article came out, so I thought I’d share that as well.
A quick reminder: the Crash the Cub series is available for pre-order. Please share and write a review from wherever you order. Reviews help get the book noticed and spread the word, especially any books purchased on Amazon (unbelievably, those kinds of things matter).
And feel free to reach out to me and let me know what your child thinks — the books were written for them… to be read together with extra love and cuddles. Thank you so much for letting me be a part of storytime.
Questions for all mothers who are writers 🙌
🌷🌷🙏🏻